Author Archives: kmccallum

Sunset Park: The Meeting that Never Happened

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6:30 PM on 18 February found me sitting in a foldout chair in the Sunset Park Community Board Office. It was a ridiculously cold evening, and quorum in the neighbourhood is astonishingly high. There were at least eighteen people in the small room, not counting my group-mates, but we were about three short from making the meeting official. Public comment was still made – Sunset Park has a very active community and multiple meetings at any given time, and elected officials or their offices made appearances – and the Housing and Education Committees delivered reports.

Housing Committee Chair Marcela Mitaynes addressed the board on the housing crisis in the neighbourhood. Sunset Park has a family shelter, but it only has six units available. According to recent statistics, 47 of the families who went through the Bronx Intake Centre in 2014 were from Sunset Park; it is unlikely they will return to their neighbourhood. Many families don’t even make it to the shelters; it is estimated that 35% of the community live in severely overcrowded conditions, making Sunset Park the neighbourhood with the highest overcrowding. Families illegally double-up in housing – either as a way to make a bit of extra money by partitioning their homes and renting out rooms, or just as a way to keep friends and family out of the system. Because the neighbourhood has such large immigrant populations, the board believes that it’s possible that they are unaware of their resources.

Some solutions are being considered to this problem: affordable housing could be built over the Sunset Park library, hotels could be used as shelters – and in some cases, already are – or Brooklyn could get an intake centre in the Bedford Avenue Armoury. Building a shelter in Sunset Park would certainly alleviate the issue as well, although Chairwoman Mitaynes acknowledged that there is a stigma surrounding shelters. The argument for the shelter would include the fact that it could be used as a community residential resource.

One of the members of the Education Committee presented on a positive development for the neighbourhood: the NYC Department of Education approved the construction of a new, 676-seat primary/intermediate school in Sunset Park on 3rd Avenue between 59th and 60th St, which is projected to open in 2019. There is a severe deficit of educational facilities in Sunset Park; by 2019, it’s projected that schools will be enrolled at up to 156% of their capacity. The new school would lighten that burden a little.

There are, however, stipulations: first, the committee is still in negotiations with the landowners. Second, due to the overcrowding in schools, a larger building might be a better project to pursue. Third, 3rd Avenue is infamously dangerous, and child safety is a huge concern in the building of this project. The board would like to pursue aid from the Department of Transportation and School Construction Authority to resolve this matter. Accepting the project was meant to have been voted upon at this meeting, but due to the lack of quorum, it was deferred. A resolution is due to the NYC School Construction Authority by 19 March.

 

Disinvestment and Profit

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Why bother with upkeep on a building you know will be a money sink, when other ventures are more profitable? It may not be morally just, but it makes sense. And because rent is so expensive in NYC, it’s the disinvestment that’s keeping the prices down. But as the New Urban Frontier reading mentioned, disinvestment is a reversible phenomenon that may not necessarily correlate to gentrification. This also makes sense. Just as one stops upkeep, one can restart it. The problem here is pricing. Landlords need to make money, just as everyone else needs to make money in their occupation. It might seem harsh, but it’s business. If a landlord decides to invest in a previously disinvested building, he’s going to have to do it at a loss or he’s going to have to get the money from somewhere else. Two immediate options come to mind, each in their own way unappealing: raise the rent, or subsidise the building. The issue is immediately apparent in the former; in the latter, we don’t have money to do such a thing, and the cycle continues (raise taxation, or draw funding from other ventures). It’s a messy business, and there’s no immediate solution.

Question: How would you propose to reverse disinvestment without incurring gentrification?

Follow the Money

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The main issue with governmental aid, every time, is invariably funding. Anything is possible so long as you have the means to do it. To fund one program, there are only two options: raise taxes or cut funding elsewhere. Obviously no one likes either option. As in the New York Daily News article, the NYCHA is floundering due to lack of funds. I was interested to see that NYC government doesn’t contribute as much as the federal government, especially since the program – as far as I’m aware – caters specifically to the NYC area. And as I’m not really aware of the NYC budget, I can’t say whether or not their contribution is too little or a good allotment of the funds.

I couldn’t read the entire WSJ article, but the headline may be going in the right direction. If the government can’t support a program, aid from the private sector is definitely a viable option. It may not be one that people like as much, but it’s better than killing the program indefinitely.

What is your opinion of private sector funding and development on housing? Do you think that the NYC government should commit more funds to NYCHA? What services do you think they should cut to do so, or what alternative method would you suggest to fund the program?

Exploring Sunset Park

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It was a Saturday afternoon. I had just gotten off the N train at 8th Avenue and 62nd Street. To my left stretched one of the busiest few blocks in the neighbourhood, despite the cold. The bright awning signs and storefronts were a marked contrast to the dark winter jackets of the people walking outside. 8th Ave, in the heart of the Chinese half of Sunset Park is packed with bakeries, restaurants, and grocery stores, and very little of anything written, if anything at all, is in English. But most of all, 8th Ave has people. Mothers with small children, young couples, old couples, groups of teenage kids – they were all out buying food or walking down the street or getting up to whatever antics they wanted, bundled up in fluffy winter jackets despite the cold. The avenue is certainly busier when it’s not freezing outside.

I stopped for a snack at a packed little bakery. The cakes were quite good and unlike traditional Western sweets, the passion fruit tea was sweet and tangy, and almost every seat was filled by people getting a cup of coffee or hot chocolate and a cake, trying to escape the cold for a little while. The clientele in here were elderly people, young children, or young couples, mainly. I felt a little out of place in my giant, lime green winter coat, my white hair, and my pale skin.

A quick look down either avenue block showed residences, each a slightly different colour but all built in the same fashion. They were markedly quieter compared to the hectic nature of 8th Ave, and even 7th and 9th Ave were much less busy. Traffic was mostly on 8th.

I walked down to Greenwood Cemetery, my favourite place to visit in Sunset Park. It was completely dead inside – pun absolutely intended. The cemetery was peaceful and a little frozen over, and I enjoyed the quiet. In the middle of the cemetery is a crematorium and a little koi pond around a very sleek, modern urn house that held crematory urns in little glass boxes. As I discovered talking to some of the staff there, it’s a rather recent addition, prompted by the influx of Chinese immigrants into the neighbourhood.

It being a Saturday, and a cold one at that, none of the tours were going on. It seemed like I was the only person in the cemetery. I distantly saw a funereal group, but decided to give them space. The only people in the graveyard were the ones who had business there.

I left Greenwood and walked down to the 45th Street N/R station, scoping out the location of the community hall. I passed by Sunset Park on the way. It was somewhat small, compared to the vastness of Greenwood, and pretty empty as well. Apparently it’s a popular dog park, as I saw a few puppies walking to the train. Like most of the neighbourhood, it’s probably more vibrant when it’s not so cold.

Vilifying the Problem and the Solution

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The difficulty with the homeless question is that there is no easy answer. Some of the solutions that were vilified in the Criminalising Homelessness and Hidden City readings (such as searching for family with which people could stay and bussing them out to other locations) are measures being considered in my hometown to deal with homelessness there. In that case, though, it might be an effective solution, given the cities’ differences. The problem in NYC seems to be money. Advantage seemed to work, but it crumbled under the weight of no funding. But given the successes had with subsidising rent – even in a plan that slowly phases out governmental burden – and more affordable housing, providing it may lower the number of homeless people. If they do, however, the city needs to commit to the program on a level where it won’t collapse should the state pull out. There are options out there, as Picture the Homeless has outlined, and the people interviewed in Hidden City seem to have ‘client responsibility’ in spades. Now it is to be seen what they do with it.

Question: What did you think of the measures to counteract homelessness in Criminalising Homelessness? Do you think there is an answer to the homeless question that could work across the board? What would you suggest be done?

Historiography and Bias in Urban Studies

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I’ve studied historiography, the study of how people have studied history throughout time. The reading from Theoretical Perspectives on the City interested me for this reason. I started viewing cities I know through their theories. San Francisco, as a commuter city with some very nice residential areas within the city limits, looks like the concentric circle and wedge models from urban ecology. New York City has elements of both the gemeinschaft and gesellschaft. Within this complex of cold urbanism are nestled smaller, more personal communities where members are ethnically and religiously similar. And then LA just makes no sense, which makes it perfect for the postmodern paradigm. As I mapped cities through these paradigms, I recognised my – and these paradigms’ – biases. Urban ecologists and I like to see the order in structures. Marxists and others who view history as a struggle between parties would be drawn to political economy to explain city dynamics. And postmodernists view the world through a subjective and fractured lens; the chaos of an urban landscape is appealing. Their natures influence their interpretations. Though no one theory can fully explain it, through all three we can get a clearer picture on what makes a city.

Questions: How would you interpret cities you know and have visited? With which school of thought do you most identify? Why do you think that is?